This blog is about the political struggle I am engaging in Singapore. The title "Singapore Alternatives" is chosen because my only political dream is to build a true alternative in Singapore. Alternative to PAP government, of course. As the Alternative, the political party must be able to have the visions and policy insights to lead Singapore. I will write on various policy views and personal beliefs that I think is crucial in building up the Alternative. All constructive comments are welcome.

Saturday, January 21, 2017

TOTD: The Parasites of Elitist Cronism

Thought of the Day - The Parasites of Elitist Cronism

GLCs or Government Linked companies used to be the PRIDE of Singaporeans where many Singaporeans would like to work for them. We always thought that being "government linked", they are big and supposed to protect Singapore's and Singaporeans' interests, including those Singaporeans who work for them. And indeed, in the past, these GLCs set the high standards of employment, in terms of pay as well as benefits, in Singapore's labour market.

But now, we suddenly find more and more of these GLCs are actually in suspect of breaching the labour law or good HR and employment practices. Some even bully their lowly educated employees to take advantage of them, by deducting their over time hours consistently without giving any good reasons and making them working excessive overtime hours, much more than the 73 hours over time per month allowed by labour law.

Worse still, these entities play with figures manipulated the pay structure in their employment contract as contrast to their advertised salary. They set extremely low basic pay so that whatever overtime pay you claim would be based on a low pay structure. Furthermore, they will set unreasonable conditions to milk the employees, basically inhumane to take away the "monthly allowance" if the employees take Medical leave or annual leave in the month which were legitimately protected as entitlement under the labour law!

Basically such employment terms are MODERN SLAVERY to the max and it is really unimaginable that all these bad practices are actually coming from our once glorious GLCs!

And now, we have another GLC trying to disguise massive retrenchment as some "sacking of under performers" in the bid to avoid paying retrenchment compensation!

What is wrong with all these GLCs? Well, to me, this is the inevitable result of a government that runs on Ultra-capitalism mindset. The top management will only care about their own fat pay cheque and to meet all KPI (Key Performance Indicators) so that they could get more salary increment to their million dollar pay as well as asking for bigger "performance bonus". But these KPI or "performance" don't really add value to the company nor the economy as a whole. These are all based on exploitative unethical enslaving employment practices rather than real value add to the company.

This is the reality of PAP's entrenched rule of over 50 years. They have lost sight of their moral compass in running the country after all these years and ended up with a bunch of elitist cronies who are turning into parasites of the whole system. Instead of adding real value to the companies, people and country as a whole, they are only interested in feeding on the blood and sweat of the people.

When they screw up a GLC and cannot turn it around, they would just do lelong sale of valuable assets to show unreal "profitability and value", cut cost by cutting jobs to continue justify their big fat pay and eventually sell off the whole company to foreign ownership just to wash off their hands of the inconvenient truth of their failure! Well, never mind if that is an National iconic company!

This is the sad state of affairs in Singaporeans, run by a group of unethical, heartless and soul-less, undeserving and overpaid elitist cronies groomed by PAP's rule!